diff --git a/.agents/skills/unidesk-cicd/references/branch-follower.md b/.agents/skills/unidesk-cicd/references/branch-follower.md
index 78dbb788..3c2a115f 100644
--- a/.agents/skills/unidesk-cicd/references/branch-follower.md
+++ b/.agents/skills/unidesk-cicd/references/branch-follower.md
@@ -36,6 +36,8 @@ When a branch-follower issue remains ambiguous after a debug step or drill-down,
 
 When a repeated runtime pitfall or visibility defect is found during branch-follower work, update this reference or the skill entry first, then continue with the narrow debug step. Do not proceed to `run-once`, controller loop observation, automatic follower validation, or source-commit-driven integration until the relevant `state-read`, `status-read`, `decide`, and `state-write` debug steps pass for the affected follower.
 
+Stage and end-to-end timing budgets are observability and guidance signals, not hard failure gates. When a stage or total wall-clock exceeds its YAML budget, the CLI/controller should record `overBudget`, emit a warning/hint, keep exposing state and continue toward native completion when the underlying Tekton/Argo/runtime operation is still making progress. Do not fail, kill, or permanently block a follower solely because the timing budget elapsed; otherwise the timeout checker itself can become the source of hung or failed delivery. Real failures must come from native objects such as Job/TaskRun/PipelineRun/Argo/runtime conditions, explicit command failures, missing required source/config, or operator cancellation.
+
 `debug-step` wrappers must be failure-visible and non-crashing. If the target-side Job fails, returns an older schema, or omits optional summary fields, the operator-facing CLI must render `-`/null plus the target error and Job identity; it must not throw a local TypeError before showing the target evidence.
 
 `debug-step` output must stay bounded in both text and JSON modes. The default machine payload should include step result, compact state/status/decision/write summaries, target Job identity and short error/timing fields only. Full target Job logs, full target JSON and long stdout/stderr tails belong behind explicit drill-down, not in the default `--json` payload.